Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The Wilmcote flight, heading down


Lock 40, at the top of the Wilmcote Locks.





Lock 42, the third in the first flight heading down (eastwards).



 Lock 43 in the foreground.

 Bridge 61, with the gate of Lock 43.

The narrow channel running alongside a lock is called a bywash -- it helps to maintain the water level in the pound above the lock by allowing the excess water to run from the upper to the lower pound.



Cottage beside Lock 44. I don't know if this was originally a lock-keeper's cottage -- it doesn't have the "barrel-vault" roof of the more well-known lock cottages on this canal.


There are eleven locks in the Wilmcote Flight, or as Pearson's "Canal Companion" describes it, "two outer threes and a middle five" -- these are locks 40 through 50, with Bridge 61 somewhat in the middle between locks 43 and 44.

A flight is a series of locks spaced closely together, with a pound or reach -- a stretch of water -- between each lock.  (Flights without pounds in between -- that is, so that the upper gate of one lock is the lower gate of the lock above it -- are called staircase locks.)

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